The author on watching a deeply loving relationship grow first emotionally.
After forty years as an NICU nurse, Patricia Davids switched careers to become an inspirational writer. Now a USA Today best-selling author, her latest romance novel is The Wish (HQN), the first book in her Amish Of Cedar Grove series. The stories are set in her home state of Kansas, so she can highlight how the Amish there have some “interesting differences” from the rest of the country. In this interview, the author reveals the inspiration for her latest Amish romance, explains how her background in nursing informs her stories, and preps readers for the future of the series…
Patricia, what inspired this story in The Wish?
My editor at Love Inspired, Emily Rodmell, told me HQN had an interest in seeing an Amish themed proposal from me. I knew I wanted to write something different after having produced more than twenty Amish stories for Love Inspired, so I decided to set the book in a Kansas Amish community near Garnet.
It was a drive through the countryside around Garnet that inspired the story. It was a very rainy day when my sister-in-law and I undertook the long drive. In cruising some of the back roads in the area we rounded the curve on a roller coaster of a road and saw a flooded creek in front of us.
Fortunately, the road took one more turn that brought us to a bridge. But I thought, what if the bridge was flooded, what if his car stalled, what if he had a child in the backseat? What would happen? The story took off from that point. Who was he? Why was he there? Who would help save him?
How does this book fit into the bigger picture of your new series The Amish of Cedar Grove?
The Wish is book one in my new series the Amish of Cedar Grove. It introduces readers to an unusual Amish community and explores the differences as well as the similarities to other Amish communities.
Tell us about widow Laura Beth and Joshua King. What about them made you want to write their story?
I knew Laura Beth inside out the moment she came to me as a potential heroine. She wanted children. She was willing to do almost anything to have a child including moving 1000 miles away to find a new husband.
I was blessed with a beautiful baby girl, but complications of my pregnancy meant I would never have more children. I really wanted a big family. My husband was content with his daughter. I understood the longing that Laura Beth felt, the sense of being incomplete without a child.
Joshua King was a little more complicated to flesh out. He was someone who was being forced by circumstances to give up his baby. During the story he falls in love with the heroine but also with his son.
That experience I drew from my many years in the neonatal ICU. Mothers almost always adore their babies the moment they see them but for some fathers it takes longer to make that connection. Part of my job was to help them overcome their fears and insecurities.
On the next page, Patricia reveals how she writes accurately about the Amish. Click through to continue!